Peta Credlin: Decision to use security guards for hotel quarantine traced back to Daniel Andrews’ office
There has been an attempt to cover up the truth about who ordered the use of private security in Victoria’s hotel quarantine system, but the decision can be traced back to Premier Daniel Andrews’ private office, writes Peta Credlin.
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‘The great lesson of Watergate,” said veteran reporter Bob Woodward, who broke the scandal that toppled US President Richard Nixon, “was that if Nixon had apologised early, or even midway through the scandal and demonstrated some soul-searching introspection, he would have been forgiven.”
The very same can be said of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews over his government’s decision to use private security instead of police and defence force personnel in the management of Victoria’s hotel quarantine plan.
The difficulty of a crisis is that it requires momentous decisions in rapid fire time frames and that, often, it’s only long after the worst of it passes that the impact of decisions become known. What might seem like a small decision at the time can, later on, become one of the most critical. It’s important, when we look back at the events of Friday, March 27, not to forget this.
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Do I think, knowing what they know now, that coming out of the National Cabinet at 1pm, the Andrews government would have made the decision and announced it at 3.15pm in the Premier’s media conference, to use private security in quarantine hotels? No, I don’t.
In a crisis, mistakes will be made, and while you must do everything to mitigate them, delay is just as risky. So, it requires a weighing of both.
This is where the words of Woodward are so relevant to Victoria right now.
The Premier is being pursued over the question of who made the decision to use private security guards, not so much because it was an error but because he has used every political device available to him to avoid telling the truth.
As always in political crises like this, it’s the cover-up that brings the leader down.
For months, the truth about the origins of the state’s second wave outbreak was hidden from Victorians until the Premier was forced to admit the disease had leaked out of the failed hotel quarantine operation when genomic testing confirmed 99 per cent of new cases were linked to hotels.
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With things so clearly out of control, the federal government’s repeated offer of ADF troops was finally taken up in late June – 850 personnel on their way – only to be abruptly withdrawn by the Andrews government the next day lest the “optics” of the ADF coming to the rescue in Victoria showed up the Premier, Police Minister Lisa Neville and their police and emergency union mates.
We will never know what might have been the outcome if the troops had arrived.
It was only after he could no longer spin away the need for an investigation that the Premier established the Coate Inquiry but, by its very terms of reference and powers under the state’s Inquiries Act, it lacked the grunt needed to get to the truth.
Of course, the Premier wants Coate to find that somehow no one made an actual decision to jettison police and instead employ private security, because any person who had made that decision would be culpable for the deaths of 800 Victorians out of the state’s second-wave outbreak.
Powerful new industrial manslaughter laws in Victoria have put the wind up ministers, political staff and bureaucrats, and led to the farce of weeks of testimony where “I don’t know”, “I can’t recall”, “it wasn’t me”, and “I don’t remember” has replaced any semblance of accountability in the state.
The line being put to the inquiry is that no one person made a decision here and that, instead, there was a government-wide “creeping assumption” that private security would be used, rather than Victoria Police or the ADF, to guard returning travellers.
I regard this as wrong and nothing close to the truth.
Key decisions are made, they don’t just happen. The notion that no one made this decision cannot be allowed to stand because it erodes the fundamental principle we have in our democracy of responsible government.
I’ve been on the inside of government for 16 years — in times of crisis like the Martin Place siege, the downing of MH17, and the deployment of troops to fight against Islamic State — and let me tell you, every decision is made deliberately, the head of power to make that decision is carefully confirmed, and every decision is authorised.
The decision to use private security in Victoria was made between 1pm, when National Cabinet concluded on Friday, March 27, and 3.15pm, when Daniel Andrews publicly announced it.
No “creeping assumption” becomes established in just 2½ hours, and no Premier announces anything without being sure of what he is announcing, least of all a character like Andrews.
On Friday last week, all hell broke loose as the various parties to the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry lodged their closing submissions.
Victoria Police couldn’t have been more definitive, saying that they rejected any concept of a “creeping assumption”, and said that a decision was made. Indeed, they pinpoint the time it was made as being within 1.16pm and 1.22pm — the much-discussed six-minute window between then-chief commissioner of police Graham Ashton’s text at 1.16pm asking whether his police officers would end up guarding hotels and another text at 1.22pm making clear that security guards were to be used (with a follow-up text confirming this was all because of a “deal set up with DPC” (Department of Premier and Cabinet) for Victoria not to use police as in other states, but instead hire private security.
This is the critical decision that, with hindsight, led to 800 Victorians losing their life, hundreds of thousands of small businesses their livelihood, and, even as you read this today, has meant 5 million Melbourne residents remain in their 12th week of lockdown.
I had never attended a press conference as a member of the media until I fronted the Andrews press conference on Friday because I couldn’t stomach the spin any more.
Valiant reporters have been asking tough questions for months, and for that they’ve been vilified online and trolled just for seeking the truth.
But isn’t that what a free press is for? I couldn’t care less about the #Istandwithdan haters. I have a thick skin. I’ve done my best to read all the evidence I can. Let me tell you, the holes are glaring, that’s why, despite the Premier’s skilful obfuscation, he can no longer smother and spin what’s gone on.
Inside the Victoria Police submission is critical evidence that during the Ashton six-minute window there is a text from the Premier’s private office to a deputy secretary (Mr Tim Ada) in the Premier’s department referencing the provision of “security” in relation to the set-up of the hotel quarantine plan.
This is just 19 minutes after the National Cabinet meeting had concluded that police and ADF would guard these hotels across the country, yet barely 20 minutes later, Victoria is going it alone with private security.
There was never a “creeping assumption” about hotel security. There was a decision. There was a clear decision made involving the Premier’s own office. It was made and communicated to Graham Ashton in the six-minute window and reconfirmed — as evidence to the Coate Inquiry shows — in a 2pm meeting between the Police Chief, the Police Minister and the head of Emergency Management Victoria. Daniel Andrews himself then announced the decision at 3.15pm out front of his own office.
If Daniel Andrews thinks otherwise, he can release his phone records and those of his key minister and staff, including his chief of staff who has never given any statement or evidence to this inquiry, to clear the record.
He shouldn’t need to be asked to do this by the inquiry. He should volunteer it in the public interest. He can do it today and he must do if we are to respect the dead by getting to the truth of what went so catastrophically wrong.
Originally published as Peta Credlin: Decision to use security guards for hotel quarantine traced back to Daniel Andrews’ office